How happy are we supposed to be?
Jan. 20th, 2004 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guywithmonstersThe two questions I keep circling back to are "How happy are we supposed to be?" and "What is normal?". I touched on them when I was in therapy and frequently revisit them. Like now.
How happy am I supposed to be as a normal level - as happy as I am when Mr Bear and I make love? When we have a great day together? When the dogs snuggle up to me when I'm napping?
My understanding of the medications taken for depression is that they maintain a set level of happiness as a constant. I take 5htp, an herbal supplement, which keeps you from falling below a certain level by keeping your seratonin levels constant. You can and do feel happier when something stimulates you in that direction, but it feels like your not as happy as you could be. I don't feel sadder or less happy when something bad happens. It's almost like feeling nothing - an ambivalence. This ambivalence is what prompts me not to take 5htp until I start feeling depressed. The ambivalence is like being empty.
So, let's say I'm the normal amount of happy. What amount of fluctuation is allowed? How often am I supposed to be really happy? How often am I allowed to not be happy? How unhappy is it ok to be? For how long? I know, for me, I don't want to be really unhappy. I don't think anyone does. But it happens and I think it should happen. Feeling loss is part of what makes us human. It's part of what makes us love and cherish things what is there at the moment. I know the value of friendship because I have lost it. I know how much it gives me by how much it hurt not to have it. I think that's healthy. I want to feel sad when something sad happens. What I would like less of is the general despair with the world.
I don't want to feel so sad or sad so long that I am unable to cope with life. I get depressed. I get caught in the darkness and it scares me but I can't help but feel that I'm supposed to feel this way. Maybe not as intensely and for as long as I feel it, but it's something I need to experience. I've had folks who chose to go on medication tell me about how weird it is not to feel depressed. That there's just an empty place where those feelings were. That scares me more than the darkness. Maybe the challenge is to find a way to tame the beast rather than to lock it out of the yard entirely. To learn to live with it for short times while not allowing it to make a home in you. To use it while it's there and learn from it.
So, I'm out to tame this beast as best I can. I have hope, some faith and a handful of talismans crafted from things and people I love. Maybe it'll be enough - I think it will.
In the meantime, I think I'll take the happiness I've got, even with the peaks and valleys. It's rough terrain but I know it.
How happy am I supposed to be as a normal level - as happy as I am when Mr Bear and I make love? When we have a great day together? When the dogs snuggle up to me when I'm napping?
My understanding of the medications taken for depression is that they maintain a set level of happiness as a constant. I take 5htp, an herbal supplement, which keeps you from falling below a certain level by keeping your seratonin levels constant. You can and do feel happier when something stimulates you in that direction, but it feels like your not as happy as you could be. I don't feel sadder or less happy when something bad happens. It's almost like feeling nothing - an ambivalence. This ambivalence is what prompts me not to take 5htp until I start feeling depressed. The ambivalence is like being empty.
So, let's say I'm the normal amount of happy. What amount of fluctuation is allowed? How often am I supposed to be really happy? How often am I allowed to not be happy? How unhappy is it ok to be? For how long? I know, for me, I don't want to be really unhappy. I don't think anyone does. But it happens and I think it should happen. Feeling loss is part of what makes us human. It's part of what makes us love and cherish things what is there at the moment. I know the value of friendship because I have lost it. I know how much it gives me by how much it hurt not to have it. I think that's healthy. I want to feel sad when something sad happens. What I would like less of is the general despair with the world.
I don't want to feel so sad or sad so long that I am unable to cope with life. I get depressed. I get caught in the darkness and it scares me but I can't help but feel that I'm supposed to feel this way. Maybe not as intensely and for as long as I feel it, but it's something I need to experience. I've had folks who chose to go on medication tell me about how weird it is not to feel depressed. That there's just an empty place where those feelings were. That scares me more than the darkness. Maybe the challenge is to find a way to tame the beast rather than to lock it out of the yard entirely. To learn to live with it for short times while not allowing it to make a home in you. To use it while it's there and learn from it.
So, I'm out to tame this beast as best I can. I have hope, some faith and a handful of talismans crafted from things and people I love. Maybe it'll be enough - I think it will.
In the meantime, I think I'll take the happiness I've got, even with the peaks and valleys. It's rough terrain but I know it.
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 01:21 pm (UTC)Feeling "even" all the time can sometimes seem like something from an Aldous Huxley novel or some other sort of book from Utopian Lit. class. Maybe that's why I never liked that class. Utopia or "ideally perfect" always seemed represented as "even" and apathetic, but, to me, that doesn't equal real. I find it hard to feel happy when I don't feel real.
I like how you expressed it.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 01:22 pm (UTC)it is such a strange balance to meet, and such a hard decision to make. to decide to medicate depression and then feel so much nothing/numbness/a rather blank and empty middle ground. or, deal with the ups and downs, as they come...even when the depression can feel too heavy to bear.
personally i decided to not medicate and deal with the beast. it isn't easy, but i prefer it to how i felt on medication. and, the happy times in my life are sweeter, in a way, because of it.
but that is how i felt about it.
good luck and be careful. take care of you as you go through this.
laura f
no subject
Date: 2004-01-20 03:50 pm (UTC)I'm not unbearably depressed - mostly it's S.A.D.. I've had it suggested that I take meds a few times and I kind of struggle through the decision not to every winter. Hard times are harder but you're right - the good times are sweeter this way. ;-)